Having made Manhattan home for 43 years it's hard to watch what's happening there.

The Javit's Center, where the NY Auto Show had been scheduled to open in April, is now being filled with beds and ventilators to become a mammoth improvised medical center to handle overwhelm from the virus. The only thing worse than being on a ventilator with hundreds or even thousands in the Javit's Center would be not having a ventilator at all... And that's why they're doing it.

Being a global hub with high density population makes NYC the perfect petri dish for a virus. 3 international airports with crowded streets, subways and buses make social distancing laughable from a practical standpoint without shutting the city down, which has now virtually happened. Sadly international flights from all over the world were delivering folks to every corner of the city, who were all crossing paths in close proximity, before the urgency of isolation was understood.

My sister lives in NYC and 70% of the people in her apt building have now fled the city. Last week I offered to bring her up to CT but her life is there and she wanted to stay. The spike has elevated so fast that anyone leaving now is told to self-quarantine for 14 days. There is a market in the ground floor of her building so she doesn't have to go outside to get food. She's being hyper vigilant but the city is such a virulent hotspot now that I'm more than worried.

The link at the top is a first person account by a woman who's husband is fighting the virus at home with their teenage daughter in a city apt and gives a window into the suffering being endured by a single family.

A friend from Colorado just lost his step father due to COVID-19. While he was older (73) he was vibrant and in good health prior to contracting the virus. Such a sad state of affairs. This virus seems to be very unpredictable; which makes it quite difficult to get a grasp of. What does one believe? That it isn't that bad? There are certainly examples of that. Or, is it a "dooms day" scenario? Definitely a case for that as well. Whatever you might believe about this pandemic, I think politics need to take a backseat. Full stop. Perhaps it's social distancing that is keeping our elected officials from crossing the aisle. Just a thought.

Condolences to your friend, Jim. The problem is, the virus is new, and there are no precedents (except for the last 3 months) to accurately determine who is at risk, and what type of pre-existing condition may contribute to complications.

I am on another forum where there is a virologist from the UK that posts regularly. Even he can't give any accurate predictions right now. The best thing to do is physical distancing. I personally do not believe it will prevent anyone from contracting the virus, but it will postpone the inevitable infection enough so that those who need medical intervention will have the required help available.

Wednesday - We just keep on keepin' on here, my gal is finding her legs in working from home and I mostly continue doing what I've been doing, working this site and a few others.

One of the podcasters I frequent got into reading suggestions from his listeners, one of which was a marvelous short story by Harlan Ellison: "Jeffty is Five." I must admit, I never got much into Ellison, but after listening to Seth tell the story, I'm tempted to dive in, head first. I can post it here, if anyone is interested.

Working from home is certainly different when you're very used to being mobile. Was able to get outdoors a bit today. It was a beautiful spring day in Central NY. Also, work on the LEGO Bugatti Chiron is coming along nicely. I'll post a full set of pics when it is complete.

Only "essential" businesses are allowed to operate here now. Agriculture and pest control are exempt from restrictions, so what we do is unaffected. Never had such a run on citrus. Every piece is sold. Looks like all retail is closed here except for Walmart, Home Depot, and grocery stores. I'm really worried about whether locally owned restaurants are going to be able to reopen. I know if we had been shut down I was still looking at upcoming payroll tax, estimated tax, myriad types of insurance, and on and on to pay next month. A scary proposition to look at if no money is coming in for a business owner. Hope this thing works out sooner than later.

At the start of the time lapse found myself thinking, "I could do that..." because the initial block cutting is relatively simple and boring. Then... He starts getting into the delicate details of the grill, doors, wheels etc. and I think, "Ohh... no, I could never do that!" And then as the detail and intricacies of the piece are further revealed find myself thinking, "Why would he do that!" slack jawed that he would put that much time into a Toyota Land Cruiser, something that looks like a block of wood to begin with. Finally I see his commitment to the process in that he's made all kinds of them (Saw a vintage Caddy that looked cool) so, ultimately he's doing it because he can and I tip my cap to both him and his artistry. Thanks for sharing that.

Friday - Week One of "shelter-in-place" not quite done and so far, we're hanging in pretty well. Any sort of luck and Week Two should be little different. I just wonder if circumstances will necessitate a lockdown longer than that. As Frenchie from The Cotton Club once said, "We learn as we go."

Was in Manhattan when 9/11 happened and in the aftermath saw pain and empathy in direct proportion to proximity. Because the devastation was isolated to the Trade Center area those who saw the towers fall and lived in that immediate area could not fathom people above mid-town going to restaurants and resuming their lives relatively quickly because the downtown people were still overwhelmed with processing what they saw and felt. We visited the devastation, seeing, smelling and feeling it first hand but our apt. on the upper west side was 7.5 miles away. The day the towers fell was beautiful and warm but we could see and smell the smoke from that far away. In the weeks after we constantly heard fighter jets, emergency vehicle sirens and conga lines of debris trucks endlessly trundling by. Even though the devastation was not in our face we were reminded how close it was by AR-15 equipped National Guard and police with dogs at every public venue. Every time a plane flew over you couldn't help but look up and wonder. The tension and fear was palpable for over a year.

I quickly had a better understanding of the proximity issue when we visited our home in Northwest CT. The people in our CT community had no direct impact except what they saw on television. When we shared the ways we were still feeling impacted being in NYC their eyes glazed over. They were oversaturated with television coverage and because it didn't directly impact their daily lives they wanted to or already had moved on. We were trying to process our feelings but they didn't have or need to process those feelings and while most were empathetic the big disconnect was not having direct contact with event.

I bring this up because there's a similar correlation between proximity and the ability to take seriously the virus threat. If no one you know or near you is impacted by the virus dealing with it is an enormously inconvenient mental construct. We can't see what's disrupting all of our lives and livelihoods and the farther we are from it's direct impact the more we can get away with denying it's impact. I'm not talking politics here. I'm talking human nature. I was working on the MM Traveller last week with several friends in close quarters without giving it serious thought. We laughed as we touched elbows when they left but since then it's stopped being a joke as we've learned people we know and love have the virus. (Thankfully none we've been in contact with)

When my sister came back from California and went into the city I asked if she wanted to come up to CT with us. She declined because none of us saw how quickly things would get serious. Now, because NYC is a hotspot if I drove in and got her we'd have to self isolate in our home for two weeks and people up here are fearful of New Yorkers trying to escape the city bringing more of it up here. The real nightmare scenario would be if she got it and needed hospitalization in the city. The saddest stories are of people, young and old, who have died alone in isolation and whose families then couldn't gather to mourn them.

This will eventually peak and pass. The smartest path to saving the most lives and restarting the economy will eventually emerge but is still unclear with the hardest part being, at this moment, no one has the answer.

Sorry to run on so long... We seem to be living an endless episode of "Stranger Things" in the upside down.

Pat, the problem is that the towers falling were a blatant indicator that our individual and collective lives had changed. A virus that you've heard about yet has struck no one you know so far can be ignored or minimized or waved off as something inconvenient that happens to someone else but not to you ... until you start showing symptoms and/or test positive. This is a phenomenon I run onto all the time in a different venue, and I am very familiar with it.

Denial is a scary thing to watch in action, and it can be deadly and has been needlessly so in places. Yeah, I know you know this, as do many others. It's the ones who either don't know or don't want to know that worry me.

"As usual with “this” General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, “very quickly”. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke “P”."

I picked up a ton of Ford Stock this week. I got in at $4.26 and thus far it’s held. I think we are at bottom and I think we could be at $7.50 again by the end of the year. I hope it does anyway, I want to get a 2008-2009 Bullitt Mustang.